Looters rampage through Timbuktu

Crowds of looters rampaged from shop to shop targeting business owned by
ethnic Arabs in the newly-liberated city of Timbuktu as troops struggled to
maintain control a day after they were greeted as heroes.

Residents accused shop owners of supporting the radical Islamists who occupied the city for more than nine months, imposing strict interpretations of Muslim law on the population.

Soldiers who were the day before cheered as they rolled into the city were forced to mount heavily armed patrols. Weapons and military communication equipment was found in at least one of the premises targeted by the mob, according to a Malian infantry officer.

In one suburb, a bearded middle-aged man apparently from north Africa was dragged from a building used as an Islamist re-education centre and only saved from being lynched when troops intervened. "He is not from here, he is a terrorist," the crowd was reported to have shouted. Timbuktu's melting pot of different ethnic groups and traders was the source of increasing tension, as residents from Algeria and other Saharan states were targeted.

A government soldier beats off crowds in Timbuktu as unrest hit the city a day after Islamist fighters were forced out Photo: AFP/GETTY

"Things there are tense, that is what we understand," said Abderhamane Alpha, a tour agent and guide who manages a hotel in Timbuktu. "People want to take revenge on those that they say were too friendly to the occupiers." As looters fled with televisions, food, mattresses and furniture, reports emerged of shortages of vital goods following the Islamists' retreat.

There were warnings that the electricity infrastructure had been damaged and water supplies cut off as the al-Qaeda-allied militants fled at the weekend. Halle Ousmane Cissé, Timbuktu's mayor, said that access to the town was still very limited.

While major towns were in the hands of government forces, the insurgents were a threat along the roads, he said from Bamako, the capital, where he is preparing to try to fly back to his city in the coming days. "The overland route there is still closed," he said.

Academics are sifting through the wreckage of the Ahmed Baba Institute of early Islamic studies, which was set on fire by al-Qaeda's fighters as they fled. Some of the most valuable treasures were thought to have been saved, but thousands of manuscripts, letters and books, some dating to the 14th century, have been lost.